’This is it for me.’ Pujols hopes final season ends with world championship for Cardinals

For Albert Pujols, it’s all set to end in the same place it started.

The St. Louis Cardinals officially announced Monday afternoon they’ve signed Pujols to a one-year contract, and Pujols in turn announced to assembled media at a press conference at the Cardinals’ Florida complex the 2022 season would be his last in Major League Baseball.

“This is it for me,” Pujols said, flanked by Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt, Jr., president of baseball operations John Mozeliak and manager Oli Marmol. “This is my last round.”

Before and after that announcement, Pujols and the club’s management celebrated his return as not only an elder statesman and a mentor for young players in the clubhouse, but also a contributing part of the team that will be deployed sometimes as a surgical weapon against left-handed pitchers and sometimes a blunt object, providing thump throughout the lineup.

“I’m just really excited and pumped up,” he said. “Looking forward to trying to help as much as I can.

“Our goal is to try to win a championship, like it’s always been.”

“This reunion with Albert was a wonderful opportunity, for not only him and the Cardinal organization, but for our great fans and the city of St. Louis,” DeWitt said. “The players and staff and everyone connected to the Cardinal organization looks forward to seeing Albert with the birds on the bat.”

Mozeliak added, “we all hope for a magical year. One that is defined by team success and one that honors the careers of Yadi, Adam, and now Albert. This is a unique opportunity for all of them — three legends making their final lap around baseball.”

Yadier Molina and Pujols have each announced their intentions to retire. Adam Wainwright has not, and reiterated Monday he was not yet ready to make that proclamation.

DeWitt observed several people he spotted in and around the ballpark in jerseys bearing Pujols’s number 5; indeed, the larger-than-average clusters of fans around the fences and gates surrounding the players’ parking lot at the team complex featured those jerseys at regular intervals, as every gathering of Cardinals fans has since Pujols left for Anaheim following the 2011 season.

‘Never really left’

Though he declined to speak about the past and the feelings he had in leaving St. Louis, Pujols admitted Monday that even as he decamped to southern California, he felt as though he “never really left.”

“First thing I did when I walked in,” Pujols said. “I came to the back and remembered that locker room that I used to split (into the minor league side) in 2001.”

That spring, he slugged his way into the major league side, and never once looked back.

Wainwright, preparing to start Monday’s exhibition game against the Houston Astros, was well into his pregame nap when he was interrupted by what he described as a “giant man on top of me giving me the biggest hug ever.”

He was confident only one man would’ve broken up his routine with so much enthusiasm, and he said he didn’t mind in the slightest.

Waino plays key role

Wainwright was involved in the efforts to bring together Pujols with the organization, pairing with Molina in attempts to broker a deal that could see the three come together one last time in their career twilight. It was dawn light, Pujols said, that often accompanied the push from Molina, including a 6 a.m. FaceTime call Sunday — the day which saw the deal pushed across the finish line.

“He was like, ‘dude, what are you doing?’” Pujols laughed. “I’m like, ‘uh, it’s six o’clock. I’m just waking up to try and go work out.’”

A noticeably svelte Pujols said he’s been staying ready in California, conducting his own private spring training as he waited for the call that would send him to someone’s camp. As often as five times a week, he was hitting live pitching — and, as he pointed out, even players who have been in this modified spring training haven’t had all that much opportunity to hit.

The four men squinting into the bright sun on the exposed patio each professed a clear vision for what the 2022 season could — should — look like. There was a call for competition, success, and more than flashes of the player Pujols once was.

Ready to help out in whatever way needed

That is the player, more or less, they believe he still is. And it’s the player they will count on to make consistent, meaningful contributions.

“There’s 29 other ball clubs that want to accomplish the same thing that we want,” Pujols said. “Whatever this organization needs me to be, it’s going to be here. Whether it’s the day that I play, the day that I’m not playing, just try to be ready. Whether it’s to pinch hit, or just to pump up my teammates as much as I can.”

His teammates are plenty pumped.

“Now we go,” Molina said Monday morning.

Now they go together.